The man and a tribal compatriot decide that from now on, their gifts of fruit are going to this new deity. "Ground-shaker, light-bringer, accept our offering. Do not harm us," they pray.

On Voyager, the crew determines that they are caught in a tachyon field from the planet's core, and that this field makes time move extremely fast on the planet.

On the surface, civilization takes hold. A philosopher-cleric and a local official scoff at ancestral beliefs that every star was a deity. The official then sends a note via balloon, offering the "ground-shaker" a bribe to stop whatever it's doing to cause the earthquakes.

The Voyager crew continues gathering information -- the latest scans detect cities and carbon monoxide from internal-combustion engines. The locals use a great deal of iron in constructing their buildings, which need to be strong because of the continuing earthquakes.

An astronomer on the surface gazes at Voyager by telescope, seeing only a bright shape. He tries to send a radio message, containing prime numbers and elemental constants. Then, prompted by his assistant, he tries a more personal approach: a voice message.

Chakotay and Seven receive the signal and slow it down to get the astronomer's plaintive message.

"Friends in the skyship. I call you that, hoping at least you're not enemies. There's nothing in our world that resembles your technology, so we assume you came here from a nearby planet or a distant star. "

"Our ancient mythology describes your arrival centuries ago, coinciding with the tremors that continually shake our planet and destroy so many of our accomplishments. I hope that was never your intention, but the result is the same. Respond if you can, or if you wish come down from your skyship and visit us."

When the Doctor beams down, the plan is to beam him up three seconds later, the equivalent of two days on the planet.

Unfortunately, particle interference keeps him from beaming back, leaving the crew frantically scanning his likely hangouts -- opera houses and concert halls.

By the time they can bring him back, the Doctor has experienced three years of local time, apparently complete with a live-in girlfriend.

He says the locals blame Voyager for the quakes, but the rest is speculation. Many cultural artifacts, even toys, are based on the "skyship."

Moreover, he warns that a space race is underway. The planet's inhabitants will soon be able to reach Voyager, but will they send a civilian capsule or a warhead?

Voyager climbs to a higher orbit, but the effort fails. Worse, the seismic activity has now increased.

Soon, a local spacecraft is on the way to Voyager, carrying astronauts. The alien astronauts lose touch with launch control, but manage to dock with the starship and enter nonetheless. They find the crew seemingly frozen in place.

Puzzled, they go to the bridge, where they collapse from temporal dislocation just as the effects of the planetary tachyon field ebbs, making them age at the proper speed to become visible to the Voyager crew.

The male astronaut awakens to find that his colleague did not survive.

Speaking to Janeway, the astronaut realizes that everyone he ever knew is gone. But he feels some consolation in recalling his childhood toys modeled after the "skyship."

"How often does your very first dream come true?" he asks. "Of course, I'll help you." He prepares to return to the surface to plead for assistance to the stricken starship.

Before going, he discusses local sports with the Doctor, who privately asks the astronaut to research the life of a man who'd now be long dead. "He was my son," the Doctor says, significantly.

Time is running out -- the inhabitants have developed increasingly sophisticated weapons, and pummel Voyager, the uncaring, earthquake-spawning god of their prehistory, with antimatter torpedoes.

Tom wants to return fire, but Chakotay refuses to add to the considerable damage already inflicted by the quakes.

The astronaut descends in his spaceship, but his attempts to contacting launch control get a contemptuous response, since the use of a long-dead astronaut's name must be a prank.

Eventually, he reaches the coordinator of the local military station's weather channel. "If you ever wanted to report more than the weather, now is your chance," the astronaut asserts as he demands a clear landing trajectory.

The attacks on Voyager continue. The crew thinks their new friend's effort must have failed as tri-cobalt bombs explode around them.

Finally, two advanced ships approach Voyager, and lock it in a tractor beam, but it turns out their intentions are benign. The ships lift Voyager away from the planet.

The astronaut materializes on the bridge, thanks to a temporal compensator on his wrist that enables him to pay a brief visit.

He says Voyager's warp drive will be back on line in a few hours. "I feel like I'm saying goodbye to an old friend," he tells Janeway, before vanishing.

On the surface, the astronaut, his hair now fully gray, looks up to see Voyager leave.